The Blood Boutique
by Ruby Silverstone
Summary: Sasuke considered that he'd be much less unnerved by Sakura, all pink and delicate and small, helping him sign his life away with a smile, if she hadn't said "processing the un-dead" like it was a joke. AU.
1. Chapter 1

The Blood Boutique

1

* * *

 _Ichiraku's Dine and Dash_ wasn't a place that attracted the lost and unfortunate, but at two in the morning the sickly fluorescent lighting washed away the vividness of the bright colors and left the establishment looking like an ink wash. There were other lights, glass lamp shades suspended by thin cords and lined up over the bar, stained with orange and red to heat the place up, but they were dead. The owner wouldn't kick the switch until at least seven, so the lonely witching hours of the night were left with a cold, green tinted view of the world.

Hidan palmed a deck of cards thoughtfully, staring into his half empty mug of now cold coffee. He wasn't the only person here—some guy who looked ready to drop was slouched limply in the corner of a booth—but he felt like it. Exposed without a crowd to blend into, stuck waiting for a boy who might not even show up…

And hungry.

He swallowed the saliva that had worked his throat into a waterslide, licked the front of his teeth, and began to shuffle. It was no use thinking about food now, not here. He reminded himself he'd actually just eaten, as if demanding his body to comply and stop the craving eating him alive, the overworking of the saliva glands, but thinking about it only made the problem worse. Scowling, he fisted the red mug of coffee and threw back whatever remained, never tasting a drop.

Sitting as he was at the back of the diner, facing the wall of glass that showcased the rain-slicked road outside, he could see the lank, loping figure of limbs approach the doors the second it detached itself from the surrounding shadows. He sat up straighter as the bell above the door chimed, just a hint louder than necessary, and then made a point to keep eye-contact when the late sonavabitch finally noticed him.

Mr. Late-Sonavabitch was shifty at best. He kept his head down, hood drawn nearly over his nose, hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt, and dancing eyes. They never seemed to settle down, and for the split second that they had held his own, Hidan could understand maybe why.

"Take your hood off kid," he grumbled slapping half of his deck down on the table and started to deal the other. "You look suspicious as shit."

"You have a gun," came the barely-there murmur from the depths of the hood. If Hidan hadn't been staring at the bloodless lips and waxy pallor of the skin, he might've heard nothing at all.

He readjusted his jacket a little more forcefully than necessary and tilted his neck until it cracked. "I've got two," he admitted. "Now take off your hood."

The boy did so with the slowness usually reserved for men walking up the steps to the gallows, and with quite a bit of shiftiness. He slid into the booth as if it was made of nails and hunched his shoulders as much as he could without being too obvious. Hidan snorted. "For fucks sake if you act like you have something to hide people _will_ notice."

The kid glared, and for once the gaze was as steady as it was sour. Hidan got a good glimpse of his progress: dilated pupil, shifting of the iris as the melatonin died, the sudden increase in capillaries. "I have red eyes," he hissed quietly, and Hidan took the time to notice a smudge of something dark by his hairline. He raised his eyebrows. "Getting there. Dye your hair or did you have an accident with fucking tar?"

One white had ran through the inky strands self-consciously, smoothly turning into a sleeve rub at the hairline. Hidan shrugged at the half-scared half-poisonous look sent his way. "I didn't bother with mine." And true to his word his own scalp was covered with colorless, near translucent strands. If his face hadn't screamed Hollywood perfection, a first glance could easily mistake him as a senior citizen.

"Your eyes aren't red."

"Captain fucking obvious. Are we actually going to talk about something important or can I go home? I want to eat."

His mouth was still watering and he was sick of it.

Shrugging further into his sweatshirt, the boy, nearly a man (Hidan would put him at twenty), leaned forward. A muscle was jumping in his jaw but he spoke around it as if it were separate from the rest of his body. "How did you know it was me? I was quiet, I was _discreet._ "

"And you smelled like a slaughter house—don't look at me like that. Fuck, man, you think a few showers could cover the stench?" Hidan leered. "Things like that stay worse than whiskey, I could smell it the second you opened your mouth."

He was still fussing with his hair when he answered, but Hidan gave him points for hiding just how shaken up he was. "You mentioned a…catering service."

Hidan sighed in relief. Finally, they were getting somewhere. He hunted around in his jacket for a moment before pulling out a business card and sliding it across the table.

The remains of a half-assed attempt at a card game were ignored as the stiff paper was snatched up. "A hospital volunteer group? For rehab _substance abusers?_ "

"Dirty work always needs a cover," Hidan eyed him thoughtfully. "You look like you could fit the bill anyways."

"I did."

"Joy. Listen this thing goes both ways. The volunteer shit just gives us access to the hospital—we've got a mole in there that hooks us up."

The kid's expression had gone from disbelieving to resigned in a matter of seconds. Fist clenching, he stared Hidan down. "How much?"

Hidan snorted out a laugh. "Your soul, seriously. Said mole has golden ideals and odd hobbies. We help her out and she puts together our meals."

"What kind of help?"

"What it says on the fucking card, kid. Volunteering. Sometimes in the children's wing, sometimes we play chess with the old biddies who shit themselves every other hour," he shrugged. "If we're lucky we get stuck with her for the week. Help out around the lab."

The silver-haired man rubbed his chin, palm catching against stubble. "Think of it as a job. You do the work, you get paid. Just not in money."

He let his palm fall to the table with a morose slap. "There's an interview too. Call the number on the card when you're ready. And for the love of god at least _try_ to blend in. You look like one of those creepy ass drug lords that live two apartments over from innocent little Sue or something. Fuck. Paint your nails, wear makeup, look like a goth. People won't look twice at red eyes, seriously."

And with that Hidan lurched from his seat and lumbered to the door without a backwards glance.

The boy thought about calling out to him—he still had questions, so many questions—but thought better of it. Instead he held the card in his hand as if it was capable of burning him if it so chose, and watched as the burly man walked almost predictably to the single motorcycle parked in the diner parking lot. The bike came to life with a roar, and after twisting the handle a couple of times, he was tearing out into the road.

The abandoned turned back towards the card in his hand. The simple black text unfurled in three short lines. _Konoha District Hospital, Volunteer Services for the Recovered,_ and below that ten italicized digits he knew he'd be calling as soon as business hours opened. He was thumbing the top right corner of the card, eyes tracing a small embossed leaf insignia, when his phone rang.

He tensed at the monotonous sound, and after a quick look around to assure he was as alone as he could be, he answered. "Hn. Dobe."

" _Sasuke,"_ Came a snarl. Oh, but he was angry. _"Where in the hells are you! You fucking promised—swore!"_

Sasuke grimaced and drew up his hood. "Idiot. I just wanted to grab something to eat. I'm at Ichiraku's."

"… _they're serving ramen at two in the—nevermind! Dude, your breaking promises man, and it's not cool. Not. Cool. You said you wouldn't be out at weird hours, that you'd actually sleep for once, and here I am with an empty bedroom and a busted window. I'm breaking you teeth in when you get here. Right past your lying- ass tongue."_

"Shut up, Naruto. It's not like I'm jamming morphine into my tear duct," Sasuke snapped viciously. "I just wanted something to eat, okay. Fuck. You're like my councilor. Why are you even awake?"

" _I'm better than that whore and you know it. And I just had to take a piss."_

"And you felt the need to check up on me?"

" _Guess that says a few things about you, doesn't it?"_ Naruto's voice was three times as acidic as Sasuke's had been, and he hated it. "I'm clean," he ground out as he pushed out of the diner and into the night. The downpour that had happened hours before had lessened into a steady trickle, barely a sprinkle, but the cold was substantial enough to fog his breath. "And I'm _sorry,_ okay?"

" _Are you? Are you_ really? _Because it sure as hell doesn't seem like it. Tonight would be one thing, but you disappeared on Tuesday too. What are you doing, man? What are you_ thinking?"

Fuck. Sasuke hadn't realized Naruto knew he'd snuck out before tonight. _Fuck._ He switched the phone to the other hand so he could grasp the handle of his dumpy little bike, wet from the rain, and kick the kickstand up. How to explain this away?

"I needed air," he finally came up with. "Just…just needed to breathe."

" _Air. Fresh air. Okay, okay, cool, I can deal with that. I can. Doctor said that was good for you. And I…aw hell man I get it, okay? I'm annoying as shit and all but just,"_

He never finished the sentence, but Sasuke could imagine how it might have ended. Just let me be there, like I wasn't the first time. Just let me in. Just let me be a friend. Just let me redeem myself.

" _God,"_ he said instead. _"Are we going rock climbing today or what? I can't deal with all this shit."_

Sasuke was hit double time, first with relief, then with guilt, as he grunted an affirmative noise into the receiver. Rock climbing. Right. He'd forgotten they were doing that today. Too busy with other…things.

"Yeah, what time?"

" _Six. And then we're meeting up with Hinata for breakfast. I've…I've got some news and that I'd really like to share so don't you_ dare _skip out."_

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth anyway. "Dobe. I'm not going to Houdini on you. Trust me."

There was a tense silence that followed, one Sasuke knew was only there because he _had_ pulled quite a few Houdini worthy escapes before. That he _had_ given his entire circle of friends a number of reasons not to "trust" him, but he bowled over that silence as if it had offended him. "I'm on my way back. I came by bike so it'll take me a few minutes. See you soon."

" _Okay…see you."_

Sasuke ended the call and shoved his phone back into his pocket, ignoring the chill on his bared shins. He would've preferred to change into something sturdier than basketball shorts but sneaking out hadn't given him much time. Straddling the bike seat he looked down to put his feet on the pedals, but as he did so the sharp cardstock of the business card caught his eye.

It had slipped partially out of the front pocket of his sweatshirt, the white on black hard to miss, and its back was facing him. There was writing on it. He pulled it out and shifted so that the lamppost behind him could better illuminate the untidy scrawl that marred the surface.

Written in chicken scratch so small Sasuke had to squint were the words, _Ask for Shizune._ And below those and underlined with three lines that pushed so forcefully against the paper he could actually feel them was the word, _Delta_ _._

Swallowing, he pushed the card more securely into his pocket and started his trek back to his condo.

* * *

Naruto waited, head leaned up against the fridge, until the dial tone sounded. He wasn't disappointed. Sighing, he flipped his phone shut, rubbed a thumb around the dorky, outdated device, and flipped it open again to start a new call. Sitting up straight he backed up a few leaden steps until he could lean his weight into the kitchen counter.

Exhaustion tightened the corners of his eyes, and he rubbed at them as if the bags could just be erased with a touch. It was all too much sometimes. First Gaara, now Sasuke. Except this time…he just couldn't let another precious person die. Not like that. Not slowly tearing at their own souls until they just shredded into nothing.

He dialed a few numbers, ones he knew by heart, and held up the receiver. It picked up after the first ring and despite the situation a grin lit up his eyes. "Hey," he called softly, warmly. "Thanks for staying up. Really. It means a lot."

He stared a moment at the freezer before deciding that he wanted that vodka after all. Maybe it wasn't a good habit, turning to the booze when things got tough, but he wasn't trying to drown out his sorrows. He just wanted to sleep. Just sleep.

"No, no, the bastards fine. Said he was hungry, that he needed air." Naruto pulled a shot glass down from the highest cupboard and then pulled the vodka from the freezer. Chopin. Smooth. Odorless on the tongue. "I know, babe, I _know._ Hell, I thought…I thought he was out doing another deal or something. Can't believe I didn't wake up—he pulled the window off its tracks! Right off the _fucking_ tracks and—!"

He huffed, then sucked in a deep breath. Then another one as chatter filled his ear. "I…I know. Patience, gotta be patient. It's just hard. I feel like if I can just sit him down long enough, I dunno, scream at him for a few hours," Naruto laughed a little light-heartedly, but it didn't sound happy. "That I could, you know, get through to him or something. Worked before."

He poured himself a shot. _Just one,_ he told himself forcefully. Not three like before. He didn't need three that time.

"I don't know what he was doing out there. He said he was at Ichiraku's and we all know that place. I _really_ can't see something shifty going on there, the old man wouldn't allow it and someone's on shift all the time, but you never know. I think…I think he might be doing weed? I mean, munchies?"

It wouldn't be the worst thing, Naruto reasoned with himself as he idly traced the rim of the neon orange shot glass. Better than coke, better than meth, better than whatever the other stuff Sasuke had snaking through his blood like a cancer, but still bad. Out of all the other options though, he really hoped that air was truly the only reason Sasuke had felt the need to escape via window.

He rubbed his face. "No, I haven't. I want to trust him. Searching his stuff seems…overkill. If it gets real bad I won't care what the bastard thinks I'll strip the place and frisk him, but not now. Not now. Yeah…yeah that too. Do you think we should tell the councilor? I know he hates her and I kinda do too but, would that best? What's the best, babe? I don't know what to do."

He patted the countertop and nodded his head. "Mmhm, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I understand." Propping his elbow on the table he ran a hand through his hair. "Thanks honey. Get some sleep, okay, I'll come and pick you up at around seven-thirty, eight-ish. Love you too—bye."

Pushing the 'end call' button drew a cheerful beep into the silence, quickly followed by the plastic snap of the phone closing.

Naruto didn't think he'd ever felt quite as torn as he was now. The part of him that watched Gaara turn into a walking corpse was screaming at him to tear into Sasuke with all he was worth. Was belittling him for not realizing something was wrong sooner. How had he _not_ seen the signs? After Gaara he was certain, so, so certain that he'd be able to spy drug abuse and addiction before it even really started. Paranoia, drawing away from friends and family, anti-socialism, mood swings—people turned into a nastier version of a pregnant woman, and it's not like that shit is exactly hard to miss.

But Sasuke had never been a social creature, not even when his parents were alive, and every red flag that popped up was ignored.

Dogging after Gaara hadn't helped anything. The persistence that had served him so well in the past, had made him successful despite all the odds, had failed him. History was repeating itself and he was left toeing a tightrope; pull away too much and Sasuke could end up killing himself, but dig in too much and he risked losing his friendship. What was the balance?

Naruto picked up the shot with lazy fingers, rocking the small glass back and forth so the vodka teased the rim.

Unwillingly his mind drifted to the contents of his freezer and fridge. Bourbon, Jack Daniels, Patron, Budweiser, Smirnoff…and of course the Chopin he'd replaced in the ice-chest.

He'd talked a big game about addiction, but was he just as bad? Did he have any right to point out the speck in his brother's eye if he had a fucking _log_ in his own? _I'm not an alcoholic,_ he thought defensively. He'd never had a drinking problem, ever. Not when things got tough (except when they got _really_ bad) and not when he was stressed. He'd gotten alcohol poisoning twice in college but literally everyone did that, it wasn't an alarming piece of news.

"M'not a hypocrite," he muttered dourly, then tossed back the vodka. His tongue rose in defense against the unfamiliar substance, tightening the back of his throat as the alcohol slithered, warm and seductive, down to his belly where it coiled like a great, contented snake. Poison.

He was just contemplating a second—it wasn't _that_ bad, just one more, no more than three—when his phone trilled. A message popped up on the front screen, short enough to read without opening completely.

 _Hinata_

 _Don't drink! :/_

 _2:56 AM_

"Gah!" Naruto drilled the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, but the message was still flaring across his retinas. Great. Just great.

He tossed the shot glass into the sink and tore off his shirt, ready to crash on the couch for the next few hours before he dragged Sasuke to the gym. _No more booze,_ he told himself.

He was tired enough to not need the help.


	2. Chapter 2

The Blood Boutique

II

* * *

2332 E Rosewood used to be luxurious. Tall and grand, the old Victorian styled home sat enthroned upon a rise in the land, white linings bright against the warm wood that held up the structure. A railed patio ran the length of the house and wrapped around the back like silver ribbon, interrupted briefly here and there by pillars that held up lattice-work arches. Concrete stairs meandered up the lawn before leading to a venerable entryway heralded by twin lions, stone maws partially open in pregnant threat.

Time had washed out most of the home's brilliance—the lawn wasn't as neatly kept, stoned lined garden patches lay dark and empty, the paint was chipping and sun-bleached, and the designs carved into the arches resembled cobwebs more than ever—but despite its brittle appearance and slumping tiles, it was still the most respected plot of land within a thirty mile radius.

Shizune marveled for the hundredth time, bumping the car door closed with her hip, at just how the area managed to stay mostly unoccupied when residential booms continued to pop up through the years.

 _Must be the lions,_ she thought with a wry smile, skipping up the stones steps in her little black boots. It took some maneuvering to get in the door, balancing the cooler against her side as she convinced the key to turn, but once the heavy oak was open the faint notes of piano she could hear became clear.

"Sakura!" She called into the house, her voice echoing strangely down the halls. The song—Canon in D—stopped abruptly and the soft pad of footsteps could be tracked from the ceiling by where the wood creaked. "Shizune? Do you have the groceries?"

"Yeah—kind of a big shipment this time," she swung fully inside and kicked the door closed with the back of her foot. "They dropped by the college campus for two days."

Sakura whistled, pink hair appearing at the top of the steps as she tumbled down the spiral staircase, throwing a grey cardigan over bare shoulders. "Hidan won't have to mix his drinks anymore, then will he?" She raised her eyebrows at Shizune and bounced off the last step. Lithe arms swung up and suddenly the weight of the cooler was gone, held aloft like it was nothing. "Already spiked, am I right?"

Shizune laughed at Sakura's retreating back, depositing her keys in the key dish and hanging her pea coat on the old-fashioned coat hanger. She'd always wanted a top hat to perch on the higher spokes but those had long gone out of style. Sakura assured her that was a good thing; she couldn't picture Kakuzu with one without shuddering a little.

"He'll have to tell us," she answered, following Sakura into the kitchen. The girl was working fast, already unhitching the false cupboard from the rest of the wall so it could slide out. "For now I'm just happy its big. We'll be having _company_."

Shizune hadn't made any sort of effort to hide her news, but after being badgered by Sakura with constant texts and concerned voicemails she took pleasure in finally, _finally_ being able to dangle good news in front of the girl.

Sakura didn't disappoint, promptly abandoning her task and whipping around so quickly that the pen holding up her hair nearly shook loose. "He called?"

Shizune grinned and patting the counter definitively. "He called."

If vampires and vampire kind really didn't have bones, then she figured Sakura was the picture of it.

"Oh, thank god. _Finally._ " She voiced with feeling. "I thought they'd get him for sure!"

"Mmhmm, so did I. Took him long enough." In truth Shizune was certain that after the week was over he was dead. Orion wasn't known for their mercy.

"What was he like?"

"Skittish," Shizune's brow wrinkled. "Real suspicious too. Probably why it took him so long to make contact. I got the feeling he thought we were mad scientists ready to put him under the knife." She rolled her dark eyes and popped open the cooler lid. The air was noticeably colder but nothing had frozen.

"Well, he's half right," Sakura nudged Shizune's shoulder and grinned. "When should we expect him?"

"He'll be dropping by the hospital tomorrow. I set up his appointment with you if that's alright? It's at one."

"That's fine. I'm actually kind of glad," she shook her head. "I'll be able to feed him, at least. Maybe even bring him back here for a tour or something. Do you think he's genetic or turned?"

"Hard to tell," Shizune muttered, counting the pint sized plastic pouches that lined the cooler, dancing her fingers over their sharp edges. Thirty-two. Enough to last Hidan a month but with this new boy she might have to order more. He hadn't looked healthy. "The melanin was still in the process of dying so I'm putting him in around the ending of phase two, maybe even early stages of phase three."

Sakura looked horrified. "Are you _sure_ they haven't caught him?"

Shizune frowned. "I don't think so."

It was hard to keep tabs on Orion. They were just normal ("normal") people after all, not spies trained to keep eyes and ears on everything and stick their noses to the ground like wolves. If Sasuke had a couple of tails...

Well. Once he was registered it would take the heat off his back at least. They couldn't hurt someone that wasn't doing anything wrong; past transgressions could be waved under extenuating circumstances once he was protected under Haven's umbrella.

"But anyway," Shizune continued. "I'm thinking he's genetic, if he can stave off eating for that long."

"Or just stubborn," Sakura worried, biting her lip as she pulled the paperwork for the latest shipment. The hidden compartment was set up so that the back wall was divided into four storage shelves, and below that was a fridge that could comfortably fit a human being inside. "I'm assuming you gave him at least something though, right?"

"Of course, along with a little crash course." Shizune lifted a few packs out of the cooler, the blood a deep red-black behind the frosted plastic, and passed them to Sakura who propped the fridge door up and began sliding the packs onto metal rods. "But speaking of our fair and so very righteous justice warriors, they sent out the notice."

Sakura paused to share with Shizune a true moment of dread and exasperation. "Already? It has _not_ been six months."

"Oh, I checked. The time stamp was at _midnight._ Sometimes I feel like their whole," she flapped her hand in a sharp movement. "Cult just sits around computers all day and waits until they can legally," she held up quotation fingers. "Arbitrate."

"If only," Sakura said dryly. "Then we could nail them for lack of performance and overthrow the operation."

"Careful. You speak of dangerous things, little girl," Shizune mocked, deepening her voice to match last visits inquisitor. He hadn't taken kindly to Sakura's frank logic and, as he termed it, outright belligerence. In Sakura's defense the man was picking at the way the mess in her office was set up to purposely distract him from potentially suspicious content.

" _But_ , the reason I'm even bringing it up now is because I thought you might like the warning."

Sakura shut the fridge lid, now stocked with fresh blood, and peered over her shoulder at Shizune with pained green eyes. "Please tell me it's not."

Shizune popped her lips. "It is."

The petite pink-haired woman let out a whine. "Not again! There should be a rule against sending a person who _clearly_ does not get on with the doctor in charge."

Technically Tsnade was the doctor in charge, but since she always had errands to run for the hospital the dubious honor of leading Haven inspections fell to Sakura. Tsunade would have an interview later in the evening to cross-check Sakura's information but everyone knew she was getting the better end of the deal. Sakura would rather sit in a room for half an hour than entertain an inquisitor for half a day. Even Shizune was let off the leash!

"At least they gave us the warning," The dark-haired resident offered in sympathy.

"Only because they're paranoid," Sakura scoffed. With a roll of her eyes she slid the cupboard back into place and whipped out her phone, quickly typing up the notice email that the monthly supply was stocked and then a second, informal text saying the same thing.

None of her boys checked their damn emails but it was protocol.

"Ten days then," Sakura mourned. "Ten days before Judgment Day. Do you think you'll be on shift then or am I left to the wolves?"

"Actually, Genma and I are going to Hokkaido," Shizune explained sheepishly. "We've been wanting to go for a while and he finally got that promotion so," she shrugged, a little grin deepening the corners of her mouth.

Sakura raised a brow, then looked to her window. "In the winter?"

"We figured we might as well see it when its coldest—get the most out of the scenery, visit a few hot springs and whatnot. We leave next week."

"Well," Sakura grinned, sweeping towards the front door and catching Shizune up in her tide. "At least you'll miss the chaos. I hope you'll have fun, really. You two deserve it after working so hard."

"You're sweet, Sakura," Shizune leaned in to kiss Sakura's cheek goodbye, throwing on her coat at the same time.

She was just about to leave, the door was open and ready, her car waiting just beyond the lions, when she suddenly turned around with a frown on her face. "Look…I know that you're strong. Like, really strong, but…" She bit her lip and tugged at her bangs. "I don't think Sasuke-san is a bad person, but people do crazy things. It would make me feel better if Hidan went with you for the appointment. Just in case."

Sakura gave Shizune a highly unimpressed look.

"Please? I—I can't explain it but I just…I just have a bad feeling is all. Gut instinct."

"So you want me to take along Hidan— _Hidan—_ into the midst of the delicate public? C'mon Shizune, you know I'm not some wilting flower. You _know_ it."

Shizune looked torn for a moment, then shook off any feelings of doubt. "I know," she said with conviction. "But there are things, people, out there who are stronger. And meaner. Take it from a soon-to-be mother, okay?"

"Or chalk it up to haywire hormones?"

"Sakrua! I'm being serious!"

"All right, all right! Sorry, just had to poke a little fun. Look I don't know if Hidan would be super cool about the idea but I'll ask him, and if he says no," Sakura added quickly when it looked like Shizune was about to protest. "Then I'll make sure he's on-call. I have blood in my office; if anything I can bribe him with a treat."

Shizune let out great sigh. "I'm being silly I know it, but believe me Sakura I wouldn't even say anything unless I really, _really_ felt it. This…this whatever it is, its prevailing. I've been feeling it for _days_ now."

"As a doctor I'm pretty sure it's just stress, but as a friend I'll take it under serious consideration." Sakura's tone turned thoughtful. "You've been right about things before."

"Thank you," Shizune's relief was palpable.

At least before she made the mistake of glancing at her watch. Tension zinged through her as if a teacher had just caught her passing notes. "Oh my god, I'm going to be late. I'll see you next shift, okay? Love you!" Sakura was graced with one last hug and a tossed, "Be safe!" over a shoulder before the dark-haired woman was sliding into her little silver sedan and pulling out of the cul-de-sac.

Sakura shook her head and shut the door.

Then she remembered the impending inspections (and just who was conducting them this time around) and sulked her way up the stairs and back to the piano where she could play something appropriately dark and broody. Ironically, the tune sounded vaguely Gothic.

* * *

Sasuke rapped lightly on the cheap wood of Iruka's office door. It was already slightly ajar, so when his manager went from sitting normally to nearly tipping over his chair to get a look at who was at the door, dragging the telephone console by its resisting cord, Sasuke pushed his way inside before Idiot #2 fell over.

"Yes, that's right. It's a little early but we want to cater to those who start work early as well—" Iruka, still straining with a phone attached to the side of his head, promptly lost his train of thought when he finally got a good look at the shadow menacing his doorway. His slack-jawed concern was instant.

"…Ah—uh yes! Yes, I look forward to seeing you here then ma'am; welcome to the membership!" He returned the phone quickly to its cradle and sat forward in his chair, hands braced on the armrests as if he were about to launch himself twenty feet. "Good god, Sasuke, what are you doing here!"

"Working."

"Looking like that?"

Sasuke scowled and dropped his chin. It was difficult to see past the thick tint of his glasses but he knew he was dressed in the stupidly peppy gym uniform. Usually he'd wear his workout clothes, being a trainer, but his skin was nearing the translucent level and besides his paranoia a sickly physical trainer was an unemployed physical trainer.

"You can take more sick days—it's not a problem."

"I've already been out a week," Sasuke grumbled. "I need something to do." And money. And food.

Iruka moaned something about idiot students who pop back into his life to cause even more ulcers before putting the metaphorical hammer down. "No," he said curtly. "You look like you have the bubonic plague. You'd be useless out on the floor and you'd scare away our customers with the whole," he summed up his employee's appearance with a hesitant flick of his fingers. "resurrected body-guard. What's with the glasses?"

"Migraine. Stop trying to make me go home and get out of the chair, sensei. I can do the books."

Iruka looked surprised for a moment before slanting his eyes suspiciously. "Do you have a fever? I swear if its pneumonia and you hallucinate I'll—"

"I won't screw up the numbers," Sasuke drawled, just a touch louder than he wanted to. Stage three, as Shizune put it, felt a hell of a lot like a hangover after doing the world's stupidest keg stand marathon. If he didn't need to be here he really, really wouldn't be. "Just…c'mon."

Iruka didn't look pleased, ("M'not worried about the stupid numbers. Idiot.") but he swallowed it with all the grace of a drowning chicken eventually.

Sasuke only really relaxed when the door closed behind the older man and he'd sank into the cushioned office chair, alone at last.

The weirdest part about this entire situation wasn't the fact that he was turning into a vampire. It was that he was turning into a vampire and going to _work._ Like a mundane, fat, balding salesman who couldn't have been picked out of a lineup if he'd doused himself in highlighter fluid.

"Fuck," said Sasuke, rubbing at his eyes under the thick snowboard glasses he'd had to dig out of storage, because going to work was a freakishly normal thing to do. And 'freakishly normal' creeped him out more than the aching in the roof of his mouth did.

Suppressing the idea that an armed S.W.A.T. team was about to knock down his door in hazmat suits while he entered yesterday's attendance, Sasuke logged into the manager's computer and started doing just that. He entered comments about repeated absences, felt generally unsympathetic to those who had called out and claimed personal illness, and then moved on to sorting paychecks.

He was just taking a breather to crack his knuckles and try to get some flexibility back into his wrists when his phone, resting on the desk, started vibrating. Sasuke watched 'IDIOT' flash across the screen as it buzzed itself closer to the computer keyboard, and felt the dull throbbing of his migraine sharpen to a pickaxe.

Rolling his eyes he snatched the mobile and hit the answer button. "Chill," he preempted immediately. "I'm at work."

There was silence on the other end and for a second he thought he might have just gone fuckboy on Hinata, which wouldn't be cool. It was considered bad to attack saints.

 _"…at work? Bastard I'm_ here. _"_

"Oh," Sasuke dashed any thoughts of apology at once. "It is you."

 _"Who the hell else would it be? Where are you?"_

"I just said. I'm on books today, dipshit, so stop sounding like you're some bigwig with a gavel."

And then he hung up with a click, because he was kind of an Asshole. And Assholes didn't take the high-road without some serious convincing first.

About a minute later Naruto burst into the office, wearing an equally peppy uniform, sans jacket, and a gob smacked expression.

Sasuke's mood went from thunderclouds to lightning in zero-point-three seconds. "What."

Sometimes, in weirdly contemplative moments, Sasuke wondered what he might have been in a past life. Maybe a soldier. Maybe a murder. Possibly both. But whatever he was he'd always had this faint certainty that Naruto had been an actor. He tried on moods like they were masks, clicking through emotions as if he were in the middle of an improv exercise, each one as devastatingly sincere as the last. And Asshole that he was, Sasuke was also perceptive, so he could see stuff like that.

Naruto went through a fairly negative montage before settling on guilt, making Sasuke feel strangely like _he_ was holding the gavel now.

"Oh…hey. You're here."

Sasuke didn't answer, turning back to the keyboard in clear dismissal. He was supposed to be entering a shift—puzzling out the weekly schedule was a nightmare—but he couldn't think with the thick smog of tension looming between them. His tongue felt oddly like a balloon, rising to the roof of his mouth, preparing to speak, but he fought the impulse just like he fought against the sensation that the ball was in his court. It wasn't. He was ignoring the idiot.

But the idiot, the _true idiot of the year,_ just stood there completely and totally ignoring the social nicety dictating that if someone wasn't talking to you, it means that you should excuse yourself from their presence. And he did it while stuttering out a sheepish, guilty, infuriating "sorry bro" and scratching his cheek.

The ball really was in his court now.

Sasuke grunted, struggled for a moment with his petty, vindictive nature, gave up, and abandoned the computer to swivel towards Naruto and slide his hands underneath his glasses to rub roughly at his eyes. Okay so maybe he wasn't as much of an Asshole as he thought.

"Have you chosen a ring yet?"

And just like that, Naruto switched masks. His entire being brightened up like well-seasoned furniture did after soaking up oil, rich and warm. He pranced further into the room and perched himself on the desk separating him from Sasuke, using his backside as a point to swivel his feet around and dangle directly in front of his friend. Fishing around in his pockets procured a soft box, its black velvet haloed at the edges by the cheap fluorescent lighting.

The was some lint clinging stubbornly to the velvet and Naruto brushed it off with a flick. "I got it. You were right; I totally needed a savings fund."

Sasuke scoffed, taking the box and popping the lid open. "Of course you did. These things don't come cheap."

Snuggled between two white blocks was a ring of silver, its band thin and dainty, but just thick enough to support weaving designs that somehow reminded him of water. They flowed up, casually building like some sort of reverse waterfall, dotted with diamonds.

What surprised Sasuke was that a diamond wasn't the centerpiece of the ring. He fingered the pale stone, tilting it this way and that and watching the hypnotic, soft, white, needle pointed star of light move with him. "What _is_ this?"

"It's a star sapphire," said Naruto proudly. "Didn't want to be lame and get her a diamond. I mean sure they're pretty and all, but literally _everyone_ gets a diamond. I wanted something custom, and besides," he grinned broadly. "This fits her better." He gestured to the ring. "The two on the sides are moonstones—I thought they matched her eyes."

Sasuke turned his attention to the iridescent circles sandwiching the still eye-catching star sapphire and figured Naruto was more romantic than he'd ever given him credit for. The entire piece was feminine but unique, and if he was going to get really mushy, a little mysterious. Just like Hinata.

And because that thought was a little too mushy to swallow he passed the ring back to a beaming Naruto. "Hn. It's good, dobe. Really."

"Yeah. Hinata's going to _freak._ "

"Hopefully she won't faint again," Sasuke said dryly, one corner of his mouth kicking up in a teasing smirk.

Honestly when Sasuke had gone to breakfast with the pair after rock-climbing, he hadn't expected Hinata to get up and leave half-way through. She'd had to make a quick trip downtown to visit her family and so had left Naruto and himself alone in the booth. That's when Naruto had dropped the bomb. _"I mean, we've talked about it a bunch,"_ he'd said, stuffing fries into his face. _"But she doesn't know I'm actually going to ask her. But believe it! I so am!"_

Suddenly the unprecedented advice about saving money that Naruto had pestered Sasuke for months ago, made sense.

His idiot of a friend was getting married.

"Ah stuff it, duckass. At least I'm getting some."

"Fuck off. You're going to be late for your shift and if Iruka sees you in here he's going to think I'm not doing my own shit."

Naruto got up with minimal whining, putting the ring box back in his pocket (Can't risk Hinata seeing it or some dipshit stealing it. So I'm just going to keep it with me!) and heaved himself towards the door. At the threshold he swung around, face pensive.

"Oy. Are you going to a doctor for that?"

Sasuke frowned. "For what?"

"For the vampire bite, duh—"

Sasuke's ice went subzero in the time it took for a bullet to fly. And in what felt like even less his heart was already galloping. Through the sudden black spots in his vision—he honestly thought he was going to be sick the dread was so intense—some haywire part of his brain registered that Naruto had rolled his eyes.

He was joking. Right.

"—but no, seriously, you look like a vampire right now. What kind of bastardized bacteria did you sniff up?"

 _Just joking,_ Sasuke thought firmly to himself, discomfited to realize he could not only feel his heart pounding, but he was also aware of where the beat pulsed in other places. His thigh, under his jaw, behind one knee…

He shook off the shivers that had raced down his spine and nabbed the stapler, flinging it at the stupid blonde blocking the doorway.

"Woah! Hey! Okay, okay I get it! Sheesh, take a joke asshole."

"Get out," Sasuke snipped. Had that been too obvious? That had been too obvious.

Fortunately, Naruto really was stupid so he didn't notice the sharpness in Sasuke's tone, or even comment really on his strange attire today, because who wore a jacket in a heated room anyways? He just laughed and tossed the stapler back, saying that he'd better not ruin his perfect face before he proposed to Hinata, because two dots in the middle of his forehead from a stapler attack wouldn't look cool.

" _Dobe,_ " Sasuke growled, and then because he knew the stubborn dolt really wouldn't leave until he had his answer, he tagged on a, "I have an appointment at one tomorrow, now _get out._ "

Naruto looked relieved, then stuck his hands behind his head and walked, grinning, out the door. He left it open on purpose too, just to mess with Sasuke.

And Sasuke was feeling pretty messed with at the moment. Potential discovery scare aside having the door open always felt too vulnerable to him. He'd never liked it, and now more than ever he couldn't stand it.

So he got up to undo the mess Naruto had made of him. Shutting the door, straightening out his clothes, running hands along the legs of his glasses to make sure that they were still secured, and for the thousandth time adjusted his hair so that the back of his head, where he hadn't really been able to reach with the hair dye, was covered.

And then he got back to work. Because money. And food.

* * *

"Music. I hate that you listen to music on shift."

"…ah, my deep and sincerest apologies. Really. I'm ashamed. After all this is all just so _riveting._ "

"It will be."

"I know. But for now, babysitting these," the man waved a hand to the dozen or so cylinders lined up across his desk. Each one cultivating an embryo. Each one with a name written in marker on tape and slapped haphazardly across the glass. "Isn't the most stimulating of exercise. Out of boredom I've already calculated the probability of each one surviving until implantation, and then the probability of taking to the mother despite our best hopes and matching."

The other man, clearly unimpressed, leaned over to examine the scribbled calculations and formulas spread across the notebook like children's art. He was unmoved, but his eyes glittered. "And?"

"And? What? Their probability?"

"It is always best," said the man, eyes still glittering, voice rasping. "To size up the survival of your pawns before you place them on the board."

There was silence as the two of them drank in the chilling wisdom of these words.

"Of the fourteen cultivated an estimated five will survive until implantation," said the other man with considerable professionalism. "Of those five, perhaps two will continue on in the womb to the growth stage. Of course," his voice turned mournful. "It's quite possible that neither will actually be born. I haven't calculated their survival yet."

"Not the best of news."

"No…

"But. Good news is hardly easily earned. We have made progress. At least one success walks among our ranks, although sterile. Unfortunate, that."

"It _would_ have made things easier." Although he reflected that everything got easier the further along the family tree they got. First generations always sucked.

"Yes, however so do resources." A friendly hand landed on the scientist's shoulder, pale and cold. "Send word to Danzo for me. We need additional funding, and if at all possible, more bodies. Anko can only pull in so many."

"Of course. Anything else?"

"A time machine," said the rasping voice, now dry as bone. "So that I could go back and give this wealth of technology to my past self and start working on this much, much sooner."

The scientist laughed. "Perhaps that will be our next project."

"Yes…yes, perhaps. Goodnight, and if you _insist_ on music keep one of those infernal headphones out. The guards are incompetent."

* * *

Fun fact: One of the rumors circling about the wide and wonderful web about vampires, and more specifically identifying vampires, is that they had no bones and that their bodies were "soft and feeling of jelly." Who knows where I found this tidbit of information, but I thought it would be fun to include. When I went out to see if I could find it again the closest I got was that in the olden days people would exhume corpses, see them bloated and ruddy-giving them a "healthful" appearance, and presume them to be a vampire. Because, you know, bloating wasn't something they were used to seeing in decomposition.

And if you have never seen a star sapphire google that AT ONCE. And once you've had your share of pictures go to a jewelry counter at the mall and look at one because pictures can only do so much. The six-pointed star actually moves. It has to do with the way the stone was cut but it is beautiful. For Hinata's ring, I decided to make the overall color of the stone a pale blue rather than traditionally dark so it would match the moonstones.

Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

The Blood Boutique

III

* * *

Right off the bat, he knew something had gone really, horribly, and significantly _wrong._

Sasuke had a car, but when he'd woken up that morning feeling like he was four shots in and not stopping he'd reached for his phone. Too many college nights spent swaying on his feet had hammered in the taxi service number. Not a particularly glowing accomplishment, but he was grateful for it now. All he had to worry about was getting sandals on his feet, bundling up despite the cheery spring weather, and making sure his breath was fresh.

And not fainting as soon as he stood up, apparently.

He must've looked quite the sight because the cab driver took his tip with a concerned look and a "Best be getting in there, son. They'll take care of you."

 _They'd better,_ Sasuke thought with an anchor of dread in his stomach, peering through swimming vision up at the hospital doors and a vague understanding that he might be panicking. Just a little.

In some backward attempt at comforting himself, Sasuke made the mistake of considering the worst case scenario: it was that some poor sap totally unaware of the vampire community living next door was going to get his cadaver-like body and fuck everything up, and that was actually pretty likely.

He'd probably call the cops, this supposed poor sap, and then Sasuke would be found out and experimented on in some dark underground lab. Would other vampires come and help him? Would they already be down there? Or was the hospital itself that creepy lab and it had a level only a key could make the elevators go to?

Not for the first time he wondered if it was smart to trust this supposed Haven. They didn't give many details, they had a monopoly of the entire community he was sure, and he hadn't seen another person like him since that Hidan character, and he seemed…off. Off in a bad way. Sasuke couldn't help but notice how often he had licked his teeth like he was thirsty. Like he couldn't wait to get out of the shitty diner and get some "real" food.

He looked like the kind of psycho that actually would go out and drink someone dry. For all Sasuke knew he was about to walk into some crazy satanic cult and be forced to "accept" his true nature as an agent of evil, weekly kill quota and all.

 _Oh god,_ he thought with a lurch. _Would they go after everyone?_

Naruto, Hinata, Chouji…it was possible that they were in some kind of danger now, wasn't it? That's how all the movies played out, right? Would they be kidnapped?

Skipping heartbeats had never happened to him, but no one ever talked about how the hammering was just as terrible a feeling.

He didn't have much choice though. It was nearing the nine AM mark and even though his appointment was at one, and he had no idea if he could really trust these people, he wasn't stupid enough to wait. He was dreadfully low on oxygen if Shizune was to be believed, and if he didn't get some working red blood cells in him the survivalist's brain was going to take over and hunt something down. Hunt _someone_ down.

Sasuke stumbled towards the front doors, the ones that had ER written all over them, hoping to all hell that the doctor he was supposed to meet today was already in.

Was this really his life? Walking into a hospital because he was more likely to injure someone else because he wasn't feeling right? Swallowing the bile rising repeatedly in the back of his throat because god, just seeing the color red was making him thirsty and hurl all at once? Hearing the drumbeat of a dozen hearts, pounding in his ears, making his eyes dance from one tune to another?

It took him a second to realize something else in his vision was off, besides the swimming.

A flicker, flashing for the nanosecond following his blink. Something of white, and then the white split into all the colors of the rainbow, a kaleidoscope spinning and whirling around before he had to blink again. It became stronger and stronger, rushing towards his eyes from the back of his brain like a battering ram, or an ocean tide waiting to become a tsunami. It threw his world into a relief of barely realized details for that split moment, too intense for his brain to process, but whatever it was it kept coming.

Sasuke could only stagger sideways as something blinded him, only didn't. There was nothing blurry that he saw, no fuzz that made you think you were just waking up. It was all too sharp, now. The hair curling around the ear of an elderly patient, the neon flash of cell phone notifications, the glint of fluorescent light off of teeth bared in a smile.

It _hurt._

Those drumbeats had a motion to them now, a stage of dancers to match the symphony singing to his soul. They pulsed like lightning behind storm clouds, nestled between shirt collars and hiding behind sleeves, snuggled in the places he couldn't see but could nearly taste. Taste. Like he wanted to bite down.

The mere thought made him clap his teeth together, and the wave of horror that hit him would have sent him screaming out the door if he hadn't been absolutely positive a body would've come of it.

Disturbed. He was disturbed and terrible and felt awful in so many ways. Awful because his stomach was turning like he was a dog—mad dog, shoot him down—awful because there was a craving so intense it clawed at his feet, like skeleton hands pulling him forward, beckoning him closer and closer to a cliff he wasn't ready to face.

Not for the first time, it was occurring to him that the thought of human blood was causing a hunger pain. Human.

The world was swimming again, and the reason dripped out of his tear duct and down one cheek, past tight lips that hid clenched teeth. He wiped it away with a gasp that drew more than one eye. Eyes with blood in them—he could see the little paths snaking down to every iris, God almighty _what was this—_

He was a monster.

"…Sir?"

He was a monster because he wanted them, wanted those little veins of red. It was sick. He was _sick._

"Sir."

The morning had started fairly normally—no. No, that wasn't right. Nothing had been normal since about three weeks ago when all this shit started. When the late nights of fury had kept him up, the nervous energy that made his hands shake sometimes, when the need to wander and move overcame him so intensely he found himself breaking things.

He'd thought it had been the withdrawals back then, but it was something so much worse. How had this happened to him? There were no bites, no past family illnesses; nothing. Were the drugs responsible? No one ever knew quite what was in them, they could have been laced with any chemical under the sun, maybe even radioactive. Could they have been responsible? Could they?

"Sir, can you hear me?"

Stop talking. He was thinking.

The eyes were back, right in front his face, and the blue of their color barely even registered. He could see the pulse through every tiny capillary— _holy fuck—_ this was hitting him really hard right now, like a fist to the throat—and it wasn't just the eyes that were pulsing. He could see her heart, hear it, like the fragile skin barrier covering it mattered about as much as the ribs, and it was starting to pick up. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump-ba-dump-ba-dump…

"Blood," he choked out. Saliva was in his mouth. In. His. Mouth. When it didn't belong!

For a second he stopped seeing the red in her eyes and saw instead the flash of recognition. He zeroed in on that and clung to it for his own rationality. This was a living, breathing (blood pumping, beating, _delicious—_ he gagged) human being that had a life and had thoughts and all he could focus on was—

"Blood? You gave blood?" Something that spoke of her career was in her voice, something no-nonsense, and suddenly he was getting dragged away by the arm. "Kimiko, I need you to page Dr. Haruno and send her to room 104 _immediately._ Lee, get me two quarts of O and meet me there."

Her eyes were back and he told himself the blue was pretty. Pretty, pretty blue. Like the sky, like baby blankets, like veins, _not like veins._

(He was panicking now, definitely. His heart was beating too fast and he was sweating. Sweating on his back, on his brow, out of his eyes to drip on the tile. He was a bloodsucker. Dear God.)

"Sir, my name is Ino. I'm an intern here at the hospital and I'm going to be administering blood. You're not reacting well to your donation, it's making you dizzy and nauseous. Do you require oxygen?"

"You're giving me blood?"

( _No!_ Don't _feed it!_ )

But she was already pushing him into a room, snapping on plastic gloves, and reaching for a needle and a bottle of alcohol. "Once Lee gets here with your donation I will insert the needle, but until then I need to disinfect your elbow. Please lay back, if you feel like you're going to faint I need you to say something. Can you do that?"

Depends. Could she tilt her neck a little further that way…?

Sasuke sat the hell down, jaw tight and eyes wide with a fear he hadn't felt since he saw his parents.

"Sir, I need your arm. Sir, please I promise you are going to feel better once you have the blood in you, okay? I need your arm." She was tugging at his jacket sleeve, and he realized with some dim horror that he'd clamped his arms around himself like he could make a straight-jacket out of his fingers.

She cursed, blonde bun bright under the bland hospital room lighting, and wrenched his arm out from his grip. Those intense flickers kept happening, staying longer and longer each time, giving him whiplash. Shino had once said that if he ever needed to make himself puke, he'd just play with his glasses. Flipping them down and up and down and up again until the difference in visions would make him nauseous and hurt all at once. These flashes felt like that.

"Did you have an appointment today?"

With nimble fingers she exposed the crook of his elbow, examining the bulged scar right above the vein, and swabbed an alcohol-laden cotton ball over the area. "Don't breathe on it—it has to dry on its own for thirty seconds, now please tell me if you had an appointment today."

"Uh," said Sasuke. The smell of the alcohol was clearing his head, just a little, it burned. Still, the flashes came, and he was surprised to see his own pulse beat like bright bioluminescence under his skin. Wasn't he supposed to be dead? Vampires were corpses. "Yeah. Yeah, it was at one. I'm…early."

And his doctor was late.

"Who was it with?"

"Dr. Haruno," he shook himself, trying to win his clarity back from the instinct taking over his mind. "I had an appointment with Dr. Haruno."

She didn't seem surprised. "I figured."

For a moment she looked uncertain. "Are you…are you okay? You're not going to go full out on me, are you? Because I mean it's kinda cool and all, and I'm pretty sure I'd make it since we're in a hospital all things considered, but…" her jaw snapped. "You know what? I need to shut up. And find you your donation. Where in the hell is Lee? And forehead?"

"You have a spider web on your throat," said Sasuke, mesmerized by the techno light show racing like highways up her shoulder to right under her jaw; so alive.

She slapped a hand over the area, shaking a finger at him. "Dude. Don't eat me. I'm serious."

What…

 _What?_

"I'm not—"

Lee chose that moment to knock politely at the door and she seemed to wipe away any lingering anxiousness with the sound. Seconds later, with a low, "Tell that pink harpy to move it _double time,"_ that he was sure he wasn't supposed to be able to hear, she was back with two little plastic bags.

He tried not to drool. Really tried. And then puked.

"Okay," she said. Ino, right? She held his disinfected arm out of the way. "Not the worst I've seen today. Just…look away or something. I'll clean you up as soon as I get done with this."

Sasuke barely felt the pressure of the needle, a sensation he'd long numbed himself to feel, but he took her advice and looked away. Looked away as far as he could and clapped his hand over his mouth and nose. The acid of his own vomit was decorating his sweatshirt and it wasn't pleasant. At least it was more of a hiccup instead of a barf bomb. He didn't want to full out spew chunks like he did after eating honeydew for the first time.

Honeydew, ugh.

Amazingly, this seemed to finally snap him out of it. Whether it was gravity pulling blood into his body that wasn't his or the thought of something even more nauseating, he didn't question too closely, he was just grateful he could focus on breathing again.

There was still a strange flickering to the room, but just like that the worst of his issues had dimmed to a manageable level. He tore off his sunglasses and palmed his eyelids, crouching low over his knees.

"Uh-uh, not like that handsome. Back straight, chest out. Compressing your lungs isn't the best idea when you don't have enough oxygen." She poked his head until he tilted it back, letting his body rest against the wall. Damn, but her eyes were blue. "Do you want any? It only takes a second to set up."

He nodded his head. Having something strapped to his face wasn't appealing but even less so was the idea of a relapse. He'd take all the help he could get.

"You know," he swallowed. Was he still drooling? "You know, don't you? How? I…I don't— _fuck._ "

Ino took in the sweaty, paper-white pallor of her patient's skin with something close to alarm. She'd recognized it earlier of course—despite the overall shittiness of the situation she'd still taken in the details like a good little girl—but it still set her ill at ease. When was the last time he had something, if at all? His reaction was so heart-wrenchingly intense it was very possible that he'd prevented himself from doing anything.

Great from a legal standpoint, seriously suck-ish from a medical view. And a mental one.

Ino finished setting up the oxygen and handed him the rebreather, setting a small continuous stream up the tubing. He held it to his face with trembling hands, but she could see that he was starting to calm down. He wasn't crying anymore, at least.

She approached him cautiously, snapping off her gloves and tossing them into a nearby trashcan. "Do you remember my name?" she asked gently, placing feather-light fingers on his shoulders. He pulled his hand away from his eyes, thumbs and forefingers wet and looked up at her.

His eyes were red. Red on red. Iris browning from what was possibly a very deep shade to a ruddy, autumnal rust. Bright spots of crimson were speckling close to the pupil, possibly there from the recent dilation or just a genetic quirk, but it hinted at what the final color would settle as. The sclera was pink from irritation.

"Ino," he said, then sniffed wetly. "You said your name was Ino."

She offered him a wavering smile. "Yeah. I'm Ino. Ino the intern."

"Ino the intern," he scoffed, still clearly disoriented from his ordeal. "I'm…I'm Sasuke. And I'm not going to eat you."

Her smile became more of one, and she turned away to gather a few antibacterial wipes. "For the mess," she explained and handed him the wipes to clean up the front of his shirt. He took the hint but did so with robotic stiffness, eyes glassy and distant.

She watched him for a moment, lost in her own thoughts of another set of eyes, still dark but with skin as pale as his, and hair just a shade or two lighter than the ebony dye he'd chosen, before coming to herself and pulling up the rolling stool. It put her at a lower elevation than him, almost a different atmosphere because of his long torso, and she hoped it would put him at ease.

There was something left of panic galloping around in her heart, but she steeled her resolve. Tazer-less with a potentially volatile patient was exactly the kind of situation she'd been trained to avoid, Sakura was going to eat her for lunch, but he was still a human being and he deserved to be treated like one.

"It's nice to meet you Sasuke," she started. It was a good start. She opened with that kind of candy nonsense when she was at gala functions or shitty blind dates. What came after was always hardest, and he didn't look the type to appreciate small talk. Drats.

She hadn't rehearsed this spiel. Sakura was the one that usually gave The Talk and Ino didn't appreciate having to adlib. Not when she was going to set the tone for someone's personal sanity in the coming days.

Well. That made her heart pound. She wondered if he could hear it.

(He could.)

"Anyway," she sat up straighter. "Um, yeah. So. How's the fresh air?"

Remembering the plastic piece in his hand, Sasuke pulled it to his nose. Sucking in the air was cold and stark, but it calmed him down. "Good," he said, and his breath fogged against the plastic.

It was weird being hooked to tubing again. The last time he'd been in a situation like this it was because he'd overdosed. The events of that day were blurry, but he remembered waking up to Naruto crying over him. Sobbing…actually sobbing. He'd thought he'd died.

Maybe he had. Maybe that was the start of this whole shit show. Maybe it was the pistol start to the race towards the unknown. He didn't like it. He didn't know what his life was supposed to look like now, and Ino the intern didn't look she knew how to move forward either.

She squeezed the sides of her knees, and he wondered why he suddenly thought it was weak. Not her, but her knees. Weak knees, weak bones. Did he become strong like they did in the movies, too?

"So. Um…ugh. Okay, we've introduced ourselves. Can you tell me what you just experienced, please?"

She nodded her head at his expression, somehow translating his crass mental litany over what he had just 'experienced'.

"Right. I know, I know the basics okay? Most patients react with extreme nausea or panic to their first…well, we call it going full out. It's an episode, of sorts. Usually brought on by an extreme lack of blood…"

Trailing off as she had, he could easily see the slightly off-white color to the bottom of her front tooth. She'd chipped it at some point in her life, and he wondered if she'd ate concrete. Her fine blonde brows drew towards centerfold. "Wait. Sasuke. Is your name Sasuke? Uchiha?"

Too exhausted to be truly afraid, and somewhat put at ease with her obvious inexperience, he just nodded his head and focused on taking the deep, strong breaths that his therapist had taught him long ago. Expand the stomach, fill up the chest, top of the crown of the lungs, hold, and expel slowly.

Her cornflower eyes blinked. "Well, shit."

"What?" He rasped, then coughed. The oxygen was kind of intense. She adjusted the amount going through the tank slightly before rolling back on her roller chair. "Dude, you saw Shizune, right?"

"…yeah."

"She gave you blood, didn't she?" Before he could even answer she was pinching her brow. "I swear to _god._ You didn't take it, did you? Of course, you didn't. You'd look a lot less pale if you had or else you'd be a turned and we're pretty sure you're _not_ so-"

"Stop," he commanded swiftly. "Just stop. Explain. Tell me everything you know."

She was saying too many words. Important words that he knew he was going to need to understand. Turned was easy enough to figure out, and tacked on to the nonverbal explanation was the assumption that they needed more blood. He thought to that Hidan guy again and then wondered how it even happened. Was there a cult after all? One that went out of its way to turn people into vampires?

Ino melted into her chair with a sullen expression. "You know what? No. I'm going to wait for Sakura— _Dr. Haruno—_ because she can explain waaaaaay better than me and I'm not up for deciding your sanity, okay? Okay. So just sit tight, breath, and are you feeling better yet?"

He wanted to tear her bun off her skull. " _Excuse_ me?" He hissed. "You're _not_ going to tell me information that I damn well need to know? What the fuck?"

"Mm-mm! Jeeze, man it's not like I really can. I'm not supposed to. Clearance and legal shit and all. Just…just hang tight. Please?"

Ino had never been an idiot. Maybe a little air-headed at times, which she hated, hated _hated,_ but never stupid. She could tell he was already aware of his strength, aware of the fact he was a threat, and aware that if he could use it just right, just this once, he'd get what he wanted. But he probably wouldn't. He was clearly morally conflicted about the entire thing and that would work just fine with her.

Besides, Sakura was coming.

Nothing more needed to be said, really.

Sasuke didn't agree. But before he could muster the emotional fortitude required to think about actually wringing the information out of her, his ears picked up a clicking noise. Heels. Strong-strided heels tapping with authority all the way up to his door.

The knock that preceded entry was barely a courtesy, as before he could even finish taking the breathing mask down from his face a woman had burst into the room and near slammed the door shut. She slapped a paper rectangle to the door after locking it, and it was the symbol scrawled in traditional ink there (and the almost negligible flash of light that sparked like a live wire, just for an instant) that made Sasuke believe, truly believe, that he was in way over his head.

The woman spun to face him. And smiled.

Sasuke raised the mask to his face defensively. She was pretty. Pretty and small and pink of all things. Pink hair, pink scrubs, and a white lab coat. Her heels were small and sensible, straps slinging back to her ankles, and he caught the glint of his own reflection in her dark toenails.

He was unnerved by how innocent she looked.

"Hello. I'm Dr. Haruno and I do believe we had an appointment today, Sasuke."

* * *

A/N: Hi.


	4. Chapter 4

The Blood Boutique

IV

* * *

So this was Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura thought.

He was paler than he should be, even with the vampirism. Had he taken the blood Shizune had given him? Had he thrown it up? Hidan mentioned the stench of animal blood during their first meeting. Was it possible he was still attempting that lifestyle and slowly dying because of it?

Sakura tapped the paper she had stuck to the door thoughtfully. It had been a long, _long_ time since anyone new had been introduced to Haven. At least, in the sense that it wasn't expected. Genetic vampires had been well documented and more often than not newborns have registered right away, if not expected pregnancies. Turned vampires, on the other hand, had been dwindling in numbers for decades; Hashimara's Doctrine had seen to that ages ago.

So. Either Sasuke had been somehow illegally turned recently (and it would have had to be _recently_ ) or he had more going on in his family tree than maybe he realizes. Either way, it was imperative that this meeting goes well since she not only needed him to _trust her,_ but she needed him to trust her _enough_ to conduct an extremely thorough, partially uncomfortable medical exam.

"Hello," she said, throwing up a smile. "I'm Dr. Haruno and I do believe we had an appointment today, Sasuke."

She'd been thinking about it since yesterday, actually, this appointment. He nearly gave the board a collective heart attack since it took him so long to call, _especially_ since Hidan had assured them all he was pretty much burning with questions. They hadn't known what to think when days, then a week had gone by without contact. Some of the grouchier council members had blamed Hidan and his no doubt 'offensive disregard for professionalism' and 'lack of sensitivity'. Personally, she was worried Orion had gotten to him first. It was relieving to see that even if they had he'd still stumbled into the hospital for her.

"Hn," grunted Sasuke.

Right. Not talkative then, or possibly guarded against the other shoe dropping. If he'd been scared enough to avoid them he'd probably been stewing in suspicions, though she hoped that wasn't the case.

She turned to a guilty looking Ino. "Thanks. I'll take it from here." She narrowed her eyes at the prim-looking scrub set the blonde was wearing, detecting no tell-tale bulge where a taser _should_ be.

 _Of course,_ Sakura thought. _Of course, she wouldn't have it on her._ "Talk down Lee for me? He was just about to dance his way to death out there."

"Sure," said Ino, who almost made smoke in her haste to leave. Sakura watched her go, then turned back to her guest.

"Well," she huffed, resolving to chew out her friend later. She'd been trained better than that for sure. "Guess she got nervous. I suppose she's not the only one?"

Sasuke let his head thump to the wall behind him, half trusting the strange girl and missing his switch-blade at the same time. "It's been a day," he murmured quietly. Sakura nodded her head and approached the swivel chair Ino had vacated.

She pumped it up a few paces before sitting down, closing the gap between them. All the normal procedures for averting a vampire crisis had already been taken—blood bag hooked up, oxygen mask, quiet alert page to all the known Haven members working in the hospital—so all there really was to do was explain to Sasuke what was going on.

A daunting task in a room so unsecured, but the paper tag stuck to the door went a long way of assuaging her security needs.

Sasuke studied the woman in front of him with care. She was small and pink and pretty and set something in his gut that felt heavy. Something about her made his hackles go up, and he couldn't get over it. Maybe it was just that she had more knowledge than him and he didn't like the disadvantage. Maybe it was because she looked so innocent—an employee he could see behind a coffee counter, a reception desk, an airport—that it didn't seem possible she could potentially be involved in something so underground. Or, sadly likely, withdrawals were wreaking havoc on his crazed system and making him unnaturally paranoid. The question of whether the trust that paranoia had been splitting his skull for weeks, and he had the discomfiting certainty that he should have made a decision before now. Before a pretty girl smiled at him and acted like blood-sucking humans were totally natural.

Burying the feeling and trying to ignore the smell of his stomach on his shirt, he sat up a little straighter.

"That…that wasn't stage three."

Her eyes snapped to his and it made him swallow. "Shizune. I met her. She said stage three was just…headaches. Toothaches. Tiredness. Not…whatever that was."

Sakura set one of those reassuring smiles his way. "It's normal."

" _Normal_?"

Sakura raised a hand. "I'm sure there's probably a lot of conflict going on but yes, if it was I think it was, then it was normal. You probably had some intense flashes of light? Your head hurt? Swimming vision?"

"It was…more than that. I could see things that I shouldn't be able to. Not just light, there was light, but it was so much more than just that." Sasuke shook his head at her. "Who are you? What is Haven?"

"Shizune should have—"

"She did! But that doesn't mean you're not lying." Sasuke lowered the respiration mask to snarl at her. "You people, whoever you are, whatever you're doing, you're doing it quietly. Not very reassuring for Shizune's whole 'legal' spiel."

Sakura allowed herself to become displeased with his assessment before she snapped her expression back into something professional. "Right," she sighed. "Information it is."

It wasn't as though Shizune could have said much in the very public, very busy little cafe she'd offered to meet Sasuke in. Only so much could risk exposure, and Haven preferred to ease potential members with an area of high traffic rather than ask them somewhere secure and risk losing them entirely. Sasuke's belligerent, almost impudent accusation could fall under the realm of 'expected', but Sakura admitted that it had insulted her. Partially. (As _if_ she would willingly work someplace seedy. Ch!)

Rolling to the desk at the corner of the room, she snatched a clipboard with some forms on them and a pen, flipping the form around to the blank back. "That," she cocked the pen to the weird piece of paper stuck to the door. "Is a silencing spell."

Sasuke goggled. "A _spell._ People like me can do magic now?"

"No," Sakura scrawled out his name on the paper. He could see the familiar strokes of the pen that made up his name, the rhythm of it. What she wrote after was lost to him. "But magic users can. I like to explain this entire situation as every fantasy movie you've ever seen, sans some more popular horror themes. The pretense is fairly identical. There are certain members of an," she held up quotation marks in her pen hand before writing again. "Underground society that lives alongside the daily life we're used to seeing. Vampire, werewolf, witch, and warlock."

"You're shitting me."

"No."

"…how many are there?"

She smiled up at him. "Just the ones I listed. To my knowledge at least."

Sasuke was half-sure that this was still all a kind of smokescreen to hide an ulterior motive, but once again a feeling of unsettling tucked itself close to his gut. Sakura was a smiling again and he was suddenly sure that it was something about that smile that disturbed him. Sasuke found himself studying it with intensity; was it the way the corners of her lips didn't quite move? Or was it the way her lids shielded her expression enough to wax it into something so practiced?

Picking apart the details did little to dampen the overall effect, and Sasuke leaned forward into that smile to hide how he wanted to shrink away.

"To your knowledge?"

Sakura shrugged. "I've been alive for a little bit now—it seems that there's always something I don't know."

"But anyways!" She continued, finally turning the paper over for him to see. _For Sasuke:_ was written in bold capital letters, and beneath it were four diagrams of a sort. The geometric half shapes were odd to look at, but she drew them with purpose. "See? Vampire, werewolf, witch, and warlock." She tapped each incomplete shape in turn, and Sasuke was struck by the realization that they were not so many shapes as they were _glyphs._

"We've all used these symbols for centuries as a means to communicate. Nothing too complicated, mind you. Just like a loose territory marker, or a hidden sign."

"Why?" Sasuke wanted to know.

"Courtesy," Sakura flashed a bit of tooth in his direction, and somehow it seemed more genuine. "It's…It's almost like a form of manners. If a vampire wanders into werewolf territory, we're obligated to help maintain their disguise, or alternately, to avoid become conspicuous ourselves."

She twirled her pen. "There's no xenophobic war if that's what you're thinking."

Sasuke replaced the respirator to hide how incredulous he was feeling. This wasn't on his agenda today, hell, not even his _lifetime._ First, it was the fact that he was turning into a vampire, which he couldn't exactly _ignore,_ and now there was this pink doctor telling him that there weren't just vampires?

Fuck it. He was just going to roll with it, but there were some questions that _needed_ to be answered.

"Hold on," he set the respirator down to the side and looked at this strange woman as seriously as he could. "Shizune said this was legal. How is that possible? We kill people."

Sakura frowned. "If someone had to die every time a blood transplant occurred, it wouldn't be very popular. Keep in mind that most of the vampire knowledge you've been exposed to is a fictional version meant to create suspense. You need blood, yes, and you did develop the facilities to do that, but as long as the blood gets _in,_ no drinking needs to actually happen."

"So yes, it's legal." She switched the way her legs were crossed. "Blood donations happen all the time, and we've got a designation on where some of that goes."

"And…the hospital just lets this happen? These disappearing blood donations?" He squinted suspiciously down at her. "Hospitals are huge and keep track of things like this. Someone higher up knows."

A bland smile was the only facial tell he received. "The chief of this hospital absolutely knows about where a minute section of donations go—please understand that our population really is quite small—but as for anything larger? Like government or politics? We slip under the radar."

"Really?" Sasuke didn't believe that for a _second._

"Really, really," she said, politely ignoring his scorn. "Minorites tend to do that, and honestly big organizations focus on big problems. Like employment and crime rate."

They stared at each other a moment, and at that moment Sakura could read all the worries behind his changing eyes. He was scared and unsure of his footing, and all that she could do was offer him more information.

Her lips pinched. She didn't like talking about these things in an unsecured room. Too many bad things had happened in the past. She wanted to get him downstairs, to the below ground levels were she could do a proper medical examination and explain things freely under the safety of thousands of networking spells. The paper tag on the door merely muffled sound—both ways—instead of creating a metaphysical barrier like the wards did in the basement.

But how to get a twitchy, nervous fledgling vampire out from where he felt he had the element of control and into a place where he actually _did_ yet didn't trust it?

Sasuke saw her impatience and wondered what it meant. What? Did she have somewhere more _important_ to be? Some other supernatural crisis that needed to be averted. She was trussed up like a doctor—did that mean that she _was_ one, but just for the weird ones? Or was it just a front?

Should he trust what she was saying, though? Statistically speaking there was a fifty/fifty chance of her being completely honest since vampires had to function _somehow,_ and the idea that it was totally evil and chaotic just didn't seem right. The spark of logic, of reason, was blessedly simple to his overwrought nerves...

But. The alternative was terrifying.

In some kind of cede of power, Sakura broke the silent two-way study by uncrossing her legs and holding out her hands, turning her expression into them. "Haven is not really a secret organization," she said slowly. "If you put our name into a search engine what's going to pop up is a funded research team that specializes in stem cell technology. And that's completely true. I work with embryonic stem cell donations as a day job."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at her.

"It's just that it's not all we do. It's not quite a front, but it _is_ a way we explain a few of our preoccupations."

"Like blood donations," Sasuke hazarded.

" _Exactly._ It works out on paper, we have access to specialized equipment and our own labs. Chronologically speaking Haven was an established route for supernatural aid before it was a company, but it did more than just adopt a scientific hobby. Haven is a stem cell research organization just as equally as it is a protection service."

She looked up at him, and he was seized by the earnestness in her sea glass eyes. "Really. We're established and modern. I've got a neat powerpoint I want to show you that has our entire organizational chart and chain of command. You're going to meet pretty much everyone in our region at some point."

Did she make her eyes glow like that on command, he wondered, paralyzed by the feeling she was pouring into her words. He felt somehow the villain for doubting her still, but he couldn't help the red flags her brief explanation raised.

"Protection?" He looked away from her, to the blood bag that was near drained next to him. Thankfully, the sight did little more than elicit a grimace. "Protection from what?

Sakura made a face like she'd just bitten into an onion. "Unfortunately, I can't discuss that here. That silencing spell is rather weak to the ones we have downstairs, and that information is _very_ sensitive."

"So something _is_ out to get us." Sasuke tensed where he sat, staring into her like he could peel away her secrets by sight alone. She felt burned by his gaze, surprised by his focus under such circumstances, but, she actually lived with the behemoth Kakuzu and if she could survive _his_ eyes then she could survive just about anything.

She met that challenging gaze head-on, reigning in the beginnings of her temper. Impatience wasn't something she handled gracefully, even after all this damn time on planet Earth. Breathing in, she idly drummed her fingers on her clipboard and considered her next strategy.

"Okay, how about this. I had a plan for today that I think will get us both what we want. What _I_ want is to get a thorough examination of your progress so we _both_ have a better idea of what to expect, and to hopefully begin the registration process into Haven. What _you_ want is more information so you can feel safe, yes?"

Sasuke opened his mouth to…to what? Deny it? No, that's exactly what he wanted but he didn't like how it made him seem weak.

The doctor's expression was somewhat placating, but it couldn't erase the irritation he'd seen before. "Will you trust me enough to examine you? Please? Absolutely no harm will come to you in this hospital."

His eyes swept her appearance, looking for things that set his nerves raw, but he found nothing. Nothing, besides the niggling discomfort he couldn't quite name. What _was_ it? It couldn't be just the way she smiled or the way she sat. Why did he feel like there was something obvious he should be seeing?

When he couldn't figure it out after the first couple of seconds, Sasuke begrudgingly agreed. No true alarm bells were ringing in his head, and from what Ino had impressed on him it was in everyone's benefits to cater to his needs.

So she smiled again and led him out of the room, allowing him his nervous ticks of recovering his dark glasses and fixing his hair patiently.

He was surprised that the little paper tag didn't do anything phenomenal when it was removed; she yanked it down like taking a sticky note off the wall. He felt no difference when he left the room, no weird shift in atmosphere, but the noise was noticeable.

A few stares followed them down the hall, but Sakura's bright chatter all but drowned them out.

She talked about almost nothing at all, this strange doctor, but soon enough she'd swept them both into an empty elevator and pulled a ring of keys from a pocket. A button lighted up when she turned the key, and he was struck again with the wary idea of a mad scientists lab.

"Don't worry," she said, looking up at him. She was quite short. "It's just a security measure to make sure no one accidentally wanders in. There really isn't anything impressive on this level besides a few labs."

He looked to the buttons that marched below the lighted one and asked where the others went.

"Well, the lowest one is just machinery. Only the janitors have keys to that one, I think." She frowned, thinking. Sasuke was just surprised it was something so mundane. "Something about a powerbox, as well. Maybe our emergency power? I don't know for sure, but this level's another set of labs and the morgue."

"You need two floors for that? The labs."

"More than that," she turned her head heavenwards, tone dry. "Tsunade, our chief of staff, has been trying to push for more funding for a whole new wing, but it's been slow progress."

Sasuke wasn't sure what to think about the small-talk she'd been spouting. He was both grateful and put off by the light-hearted take to his own personal crisis, but it was in that elevator that a thought struck him.

"Are you a vampire?" he spat out, almost ashamed he hadn't thought to ask sooner.

Again, the smile she sent him made his heart pound. "Half of one, yes, on my mother's side."

He gaped at her. " _Half?_ Is that—I mean. We can…with humans?"

"With _people._ " She corrected him as the elevators opened with a musical chime. "Vampirism is more of a genetic quirk than it is a different species, almost like a mutation chain. You're still human no matter what, and before you ask, we haven't documented any similar cases in animals. Kind of a mystery how it all began honestly, but I wouldn't mind explaining what I know. Just so you're aware I will be giving you a kind of Q and A for the basics."

The hallways in this new floor were narrower and darker, but that was soon remedied by the motion sensing lights that flicked to life as they passed under them. The hallway was occasionally interrupted by frosted glass doors, all accompanied by some kind of security pad.

Sakura stopped by a locked door, swiped her card, and gestured him in with a smile. "This is the main lab that we use for examina— _Hidan!_ "

It was almost comical how a man of his stature could flinch. Sasuke caught a low 'fucking hell, woman' before the white-haired man stood from a chair and turned.

Sasuke flinched.

"Hidan! What-? Goddammit, I've _told_ you not to eat in here."

"Calm your tits," Hidan pulled his shirt sleeve down and wiped his mouth on the inside of his wrist, dragging a long, _long_ smear of red down it. "I'm just dropping in for a second."

"That doesn't matter," Sakura hissed, glaring at him and tossing her clipboard on a low table. "We have the house for this kind of stuff, for heaven's sake _this_ is my _lab!"_

 _More than that,_ Sakura thought acidly, _I'm trying to make someone feel safe_.

Hidan rolled his eyes. Sasuke found himself slightly disconcerted to be on the receiving end of an almost companionable stare. Hidan seemed to be having a bro moment with him as if saying ' _chicks, ammiright?'_ before going back to cleaning up.

"And besides _that_ ," Sakura spared a scathing look towards the blood bag he'd messily torn into. "You're not even supposed to be here right now. I _told_ you at noon!"

"Feelings," Hidan dismissed casually.

Sasuke watched the bizarre way he vaguely gestured towards the ceiling, as if it meant something, with trepidation. What the hell was he getting into? He hadn't liked Hidan from the get-go, and even less now since it seemed he had a _preference_ for drinking blood straight.

Sakura fumed. She'd asked Hidan to come as a precaution like Shizune had asked but he knew better than to eat in here. For obvious reasons, it wasn't an ideal place. Sakura tossed a pleading, anxious look towards Sasuke and hoped he wasn't making plans to drive to the border tonight.

"'sides," Hidan said, pulling up the bottom of his shirt to wipe the remaining blood off his lips and chin. "I needed to worship."

"…worship."

Hidan looked up and met a wintry stare. He wrinkled his face at her. "Hell, babe, it's not like I didn't clean up."

Struggling against the instinct to quite seriously break something of his, as had been her favored coping mechanism for decades, Sakura wrestled with a tight smile. " _Thank you_ for cleaning up. _Please_ stop eating in the lab. I've told you that you might mess with our samples, and really, it's rude to whoever stops by."

Feeling that her statement was rather pointed, she refrained from tossing her head towards Sasuke for emphasis. God, he must really think they were all psychopaths. She'd been trying so hard to get him to relax, too. All patient and chatty and hoping he wouldn't find her or her job scary.

Hidan only shrugged, and it struck her as totally flippant to her life's work. "It's easier to clean in here."

He picked up a black sweater and worked his way into it. "And I already told you I was getting feedback. Man in charge kept fucking with me."

Sakura allowed a spark of concern to edge into her expression, but Hidan didn't look troubled by it so she allowed it to slip away. Exasperated, she turned towards Sasuke. "I know you've already met Hidan, but just in case he was his usual self and didn't _actually_ introduce himself…"

"We're _guys,_ " Hidan bent his head under a lab sink and washed out his mouth. Spitting into the drain, he glared up at the doctor. "And I was hungry and skinny over there had just killed something. We weren't gonna sit and make friendship bracelets."

"… _this_ is Hidan." Sakura twitched in a narrowly avoided attempt to smack the back of his head while he was bent over like he was. It would be so easy to push his head under the faucet, too. _Make a good impression,_ she reminded herself sternly. Maintaining her professionality wasn't going as smoothly as she would have liked, and honestly, there was little she could do to make Hidan less threatening.

Sasuke watched the byplay with concealed bemusement. More and more he was getting the idea that his doctor wasn't someone who kept level temper well, and beyond that weird personality quirk, he was obvious that she was concerned with how this looked. The courtesy was oddly comforting.

"We've met," said Sasuke. Feeling odd at the double stare he was getting from _both_ a pretty half vampire (he was still getting used to that) and a man who had blood messily smeared under his sweatshirt, he steeled himself and tried for nonchalance. "We exchanged names over the phone."

Some of his old self, his old pretention, and arrogance came back to him suddenly. A prideful coping mechanism or just a complex, he slithered into old skin easily and before he knew it he was cocking an eyebrow, shoving his thumbs into the shallow pockets of his jeans, and saying "Honestly I've seen worse."

"Oh, go fuck yourself, pretty boy."

" _Hidan!_ "

"Whatever. You got nothing to worry about from him so I'm leaving." Hidan smoothed back his hair with wet fingers.

Sasuke watched him go with sudden disdain. _Crass, classless hooligan,_ he thought caustically. The sudden self-importance made him stand up straighter, preen for a moment in his own stature and pride, but wilted almost immediately when he realized he was probably worse. His pride was brittle and supported by sand at this point—who was he to think he was any better, a mopey little dramatic druggy who had routinely spent hours of his time with the gutters of society.

Regardless, once the door closed with a secure sounding click Sakura decided that she was just going to barrel on forwards. Sasuke hadn't run screaming yet.

She cringed. "It's…usually a lot smoother of an introduction than this."

Sasuke scratched at the edge of an eyebrow, cowed by his own mental struggle. "Just keep going."

He didn't bother to mention that the shock of the past few hours had desensitized him, or that he'd probably have one last panic attack before he went to bed that night. For now, he was floating comfortably in a place between surprise and complete expectation of odd and unusual sights.

Nodding her head briskly, Sakura summoned some of her abandoned cheer and picked up her clipboard. "It's just through here. Most of this stuff functions for the stem research I'm doing, but we've got more specialized equipment back here."

She led him to a side door that for all the world looked like a supply closet. With absolutely no flourish at all, she opened it to reveal just that. Dusty shelves contained more boxes of plastic gloves than he thought necessary, walls were crammed with mops, brooms with their dustpans, and an odd mishmash of strange plastic lab equipment that did gods knew what.

Alarmingly, he'd snuck closer to Sakura than he'd even realized. She turned to look up at him, an almost mischievous edge to her features before they both leaned away in mutual surprise.

"Sorry."

"No! No, that's okay. I…" she cleared her throat and gestured emphatically towards the closet. "I was going to show you something cool."

Staring unseeingly at the space for a second she visibly recollected herself and shut the door with her foot. Before he could make any quick judgments about her definition of cool—he _had_ just been introduced to the presence of fantastical entities—she made a few shadow puppets with her hands in quick succession and reached for the door again.

It wasn't a supply closet anymore.

Sasuke caught his breath at the sight of a gleaming tiled floor. The new hallway was short, turning off into a space that seemed like it should have been into the other hospital hallway outside the lab, but was not. Before he could really twist is mind around the subversion of physics, Sakura was taking bold steps forward.

"I know it might seem somewhat alarming, but it really is just a small sleight—oh, and expect a tiny jolt coming through the door."

Sasuke jumped as what felt like a static shock zapped him. He looked back and saw nothing, rubbing at the nape of his hairline to smooth the baby hairs there.

"It's those wards I mentioned before," Sakura explained, gently prompting him forward with an inviting tilt to her head. "Most people only see the closet, but if they make it past that illusion this is our backup."

"What does it do?" Sasuke picked up his pace to walk even with the doctor. The hallway wasn't small, but it was just narrow enough this his bicep made the occasional bump against her shoulder.

Sakura hummed. "A difficult concept to explain but I'll do my best. Essentially the wards are something of a conscious. Not complicated at all, but smart enough to detect ill intent or generally people who shouldn't be here. It takes defensive precautions if it feels the need."

Still feeling the static shock in his fingertips, Sasuke wondered if 'defensive precautions' included electrocuting people.

"And it _felt_ that I wasn't a threat? Just like that?"

Sakura beamed at him. "I didn't think you meant to hurt me either."

She walked on in the sudden silence that tied Sasuke's tongue in knots, opening yet _another_ door to yet another room. Beyond it gave Sasuke more to think about than whether or not Sakura's comment made him more or less of a man.

Equipment. So much of it.

"Well!" Sakura tossed the clipboard away and gestured to the nearest…contraption. "Since we've been speculating up until this point about close to everything about you, let's run a few tests. We'll be checking your eyes since you mentioned they were different, and while we do all this feel free to ask me any and all questions, okay?"

Numbly, he nodded and stepped forward into the impossible, invisible room.

* * *

Hidan closed the lab door behind him and wondered what the _point_ of immortality and psychic intuition was if he couldn't _use_ it, goddamn. Rolling his eyes heavenwards he pulled his sweatshirt low and began making his way to the exit. He'd been pissy when Sakura had asked him to come along, if only because he knew that _she_ knew that she was only asking as a polite courtesy. Crazy girl nearly put him out of commission—not much else was going to challenge her.

But. Big man kept talking to him. The visions weren't especially clear; so much of his past power had been lost when he dialed down the psychopath. What he _did_ see was the figure of a man. Not quite a silhouette and not quite an image, but enough alarm was attached to the vague impression to make it pressing.

He felt he needed to get to the hospital. Then, he felt he needed to get to the lab. After that the feeling ebbed, only leaving him with the certainty that the issue was going to come to him. He knew the kid wasn't the issue, at least not on his own, but he might've brought something with him. A camera, a voice recorder, something that attached him with another person pulling the strings, but when the little shit walked in any and all speculations went out the window.

Sasuke Uchiha wasn't a threat. A huge, complicated problem, yes (the sheer amount of _'trouble'_ that had radiated off of him had tripled since Hidan last saw him at the diner), but an actual threat that meant actual harm? No.

Which meant that loitering in the freakishly sterile area with a snack had been a complete waste of time.

Grumpy, Hidan decided that he was going to just go home. He'd double checked the maintenance on the wards while he was in the lab so he didn't worry about a break in. It was just Sakura and pretty boy in there and he wasn't feeling up to haunting the halls of a hospital. There was always too much _feeling_ happening. The walls were soaked with it, and the ghosts got irritating after a while.

The buzzing sensation of danger had all but disappeared as he walked further and further, and when the elevator doors opened to take him to ground level they dropped even lower.

There was a slight, unassuming doctor occupying the space inside and he moved over with a bland smile. "Going up?"

Hidan walked in, eyeing the white-haired man strangely. "Weren't you?"

Unless either of them looked like janitors or mechanics, there wasn't any reason to go down.

…Actually, since he had to wait for the elevator, and the man didn't get off on Hidan's floor, did that mean he _was_ going down?

He was treated to a sincerer smile than before and almost immediately Hidan felt most of his paranoia and anxiety drift away. It actually took him a second to detect the sheer, spider-silk spell that hovered like a breathable cloud around the…witch? Warlock? If he himself hadn't sworn oaths he might not have detected the sophisticated deception, but as it was even he felt blinded. Like his vision had fogged; a sixth sense dimmed.

Unamused at the reminder of how far he had fallen from previous power, he almost ignored the quiet reply to his question:

"Oh, I'm going up," said the man, reaching to pop a headphone into his ear. "Corpses don't make good company."

* * *

A/N: Behold, a semi-presentable update in a semi-timely manner. Review if you have the time—I'd appreciate it!


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